“Tanya is incredibly endearing and adorable,” the actor says.
“And yet at the same time she’s a chaotic mess.”
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first two episodes ofThe White Lotusseason 2.
Jon Gries on ‘The White Lotus’.HBO
The honeymoon period is definitely over for Tanya and Greg onThe White Lotus.
AfterTanya overheard Greg making multiple suspicious phone calls, alarm bells are ringing.
Is there trouble in paradise for this couple?
Jon Gries on ‘The White Lotus’.HBO
He’s being so horrible to Tanya!
JON GRIES:Okay, is he really?
Or is it just because everybody loves Tanya so much?
The thing is, it’s very subjective.
I think he really does love her, personally.
Did he everreallylove her or is it her worst fear: that he’s using her for her money?
Obviously, he’s stayed with her.
Whether or not it’s about money, I don’t know.
It’s hard to say.
I was eating by myself in a restaurant and my phone started buzzing.
Because I’m not going to write your character if you’re not."
I said, “I’m available anytime, anywhere, for you.”
Then he said, “Good.
It’s going to be in spring in Sicily.”
I was like, “Oh, my God, that’s amazing.”
Imagine getting that text as you’re sitting there, just all of a sudden.
I said, “How exciting.
He goes, “Greg’s not as nice as he was.”
That’s all he said: “Things have gone a little dark.”
When you think he’s going to make a left turn, he makes a hard right turn.
It’s the way he naturally writes these things.
Everybody would come up to me and say, “You’re the guy that dies.”
They would say it all the time, and I’d say, “No.
Don’t be so certain.”
I would say, “Just think about it.
That wouldn’t be too exciting.”
The wheels of the plane have just lifted off the runway, so to speak, in our relationship.
I just felt like the stakes wouldn’t be quite high enough if it were Greg.
He also whisks out early this season.
Yes, you’re going to learn.
The phone call … if you remember, Greg has children.
He could have been talking to his daughter.
He could have been telling her he loves her and “I’ll be home.”
You just don’t know.
And that’s the thing.
Mike White plays multilevel chess.
It’s 3D chess.
It’s not just one board, it’s layers.
I don’t want to reveal anything about it because it’s too exciting.
A lot of that stuff, I didn’t see get shot.
Or did you have conversations with Mike about that?
We talked about it.
There might be something that’s intimated but we don’t know for certain.
What was it like getting to bring the tension between Greg and Tanya to life this season with Jennifer?
We clearly have chemistry.
Most people say that to me and corroborate that because I always knew we had chemistry.
We really enjoy seeing that other side and getting to play that other side, the flip side.
You want to play it just in the moment where they are, how they relate to each other.
The fact is, Greg’s going home for two days.
He’s got to take care of some business.
I mean, obviously Tanya doesn’t move lightly through life.
There’s a lot of accoutrement that goes with her.
Figuratively and literally, with all of her baggage.
She has so many suitcases!
That’s exactly it.
I mean, what a metaphor.
Everywhere she goes, she’s got to bring her baggage.
Meanwhile Greg, in a weird way, is like a rolling stone.
He gathers no moss.
He just wants to keep on rolling.
“Let’s go for a ride.”
Speaking of going for a ride, what was it like filming that Vespa sequence?
Because that wasn’t in the script.
That’s just her.
She does things like that.
Riding the Vespa was so much fun.
When she’s squeezing me, she really was squeezing me.
I was saying, “Tanya, you’re killing me.”
That wasn’t necessarily written.
I mean, she was squeezing me to death.
I was like, “Oh, my God, I can’t breathe.”
But it was a great time, a really lovely time.
So you were really driving the Vespa?
[Laughs] No, no, no.
They’re not going to let me drive Jennifer Coolidge around.
If something happened, if anything happened, my gosh!
But I had to convince them.
We weren’t supposed to do stuff like that, but we just wanted to go a little further.
She’d say, “Just keep going.”
The White Lotusairs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max.
